- Joined
- Aug 12, 2024
I mean, at that point I'd just completely restructure the way Gamefreak did their games. Conquest launches in 2013 as the first Pokemon game for the 3DS with actual tactical models to take advantage of the 3d and being able to rotate the map, along with a few minor changes. No X/Y, a single XYZ version (or a less retarded name for it) in early 2014 that has more time to cook, no time and resources wasted on gimmicks like Megas, no Fairy types to further break the balance (just buff Ice types and/or make Dragon weak to Steel, it's France for God's sake, it gets cold too), focus on having more stuff to do in the region and have it be interesting (remember when you could double back to a place and it had something new? Kalos forgot). Kalos has a small Pokedex? Stop caring about numbers, do something cool like make the Elite Four be customizable and where you can lose your status as sitting champion. Bring over the stuff that was lost in Gen 5 like the Battle Frontier and secret bases and contest (and then bring over the stuff from Gen 5 on top of that). Hell, add basic rpg mechanics like story choices and being able to travel with npc trainers (they really wanted you to care about Shauna, why not let us do double battles with her?). Then a year and a half later drop a 10 year anniversary direct Emerald remake that makes HGSS look like FRLG.I have an interesting idea, what if YOU were in charge of when mainline games were released from the 3ds era onwards, how long would you have each game developed and what years would you have them released.
For me:
2013: XY
2014: Break Year
2015: ORAS (with emerald content and better balance)
2016: Z (fixing all of XY's issues and be the 20th anniversary release title)
2017: Break year
2018: SM
2019: USUM (but as a proper sequel)
2020: Break year
2021: SwSh
2022: BDSP (but with platinum content)
2023: Break year
2024: Legends Arceus (Q1 or Q2 as to give SV and Legends ZA more breathing space)
2025: SV
2026: Legends ZA (paralleling pokemon Z as a anniversary title) (also builds upon what was done in Arceus so 3 games in a row wouldn't be too overbearing)
SM would honestly have to be reworked nearly from the ground up, a lot of its design was the culmination of the worst of Gamefreak's ideas over the decade and you couldn't really remove those without ripping out the core of it. And after that it just gets worse and you'd be fighting against stuff that is now core parts of the industry like DLC. Honestly, writing all this out and I think Gen 6 is the only one that can really be saved without nearly burning it to the ground and rebuilding, and even then it would still be a pretty drastic reconstruction to get something on par with BW2.